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Population In Bangladesh

Population Increase of Bangladesh

Bangladesh is an over populated country. The rate of population increases day by day. The total population of our country is more than 15 core and about 250 people live in per square kilometer. The majority of the people live in villages. Most of them are illiterate and very poor. This is the main reason of our over population. Bangladesh is the most densely populated country in the world. It is a small country of 1, 47,570 square kilometers. But it has a population of 14 million; every year more than two million people are being added to our population. The Population of our country is increasing at an alarming rate. The present growth of population in Bangladesh is 2.36%. The problem is now out of control. It has no come to the position of explosion.

The population of the country is increasing day by day. But production of food can not keep pace with our increasing population. As a result there is the shortage of food in our country. People are fighting very hard against hunger and poverty.

The high growth rate of our population crates problems in every sphere of our life. It creates problems of food, clothing, accommodation heath and education. The price of our necessary things is rising by leaps and bounds.

Unemployment problem is very acute in our country. For one single vacant post there will be thousands of candidates. There are crowds everywhere in buses, trains, bazaar, schools and colleges. If our population increases at present rate, the population of our country will be doubled within twenty years. People shall find no place to live in. We can not imagine how to feed so many mouths.

We should come forward to control our population. We should adopt family planning measures. Each and every family must live in a planned way. No family should have more than two children. Our womenfolk must be made conscious through education. Early marriage must be banned by low.

We must control the growth of our population for our existence. It is a matter of hope that the educated people have already realized the gravity of the problem. The village people should be educated to check our population. The current population of Bangladesh is approximately over 160 million and will exceed 200 million within 2020. The average population density per square kilometer is almost 1000. Even a very rich country would have been in deep troubles if they have to handle such mass population in such short land. So whenever the government tends to take any developing steps, they seem to fell into shortage of resources for such huge population. As a result the actual development is just getting being delayed a hampered a lot.

In the 1980s, Bangladesh faced no greater problem than population growth. Census data compiled in 1901 indicated a total of 29 million in East Bengal, the region that became East Pakistan and eventually Bangladesh. By 1951, four years after partition from India, East Pakistan had 44 million people, a number that grew rapidly up to the first post independence census, taken in 1974, which reported the national population at 71 million. The 1981 census reported a population of 87 million and a 2.3 percent annual growth rate. Thus, in just 80 years, the population had tripled. In July 1988 the population, by then the eighth largest in the world, stood at 109,963,551, and the average annual growth rate was 2.6 percent. According to official estimates, Bangladesh was expected to reach a population of more than 140 million by the year 2000.

Bangladesh's population density provided further evidence of the problems the nation faced. In 1901 an average of 216 persons inhabited one square kilometer. By 1951 that number had increased to 312 per square kilometer and, in 1988, reached 821. By the year 2000, population density was projected to exceed 1,000 persons per square kilometer.

The crude birth rate per 1,000 populations was 34.6 in 1981. This rate remained unchanged in 1985, following a 20-year trend of decline since 1961, when it had stood at 47 per 1,000. The rural birth rate was higher than birth rates in urban areas; in 1985 there were 36.3 births per 1,000 in the countryside versus 28 per 1,000 in urban areas. The crude death rate per 1,000 populations decreased from 40.7 in 1951 to 12 per 1,000 in 1985; the urban crude death rate was 8.3, and the rural crude death rate was 12.9. The infant mortality rate per 1,000 live births was 111.9 in 1985, a distinct improvement from as recently as 1982, when the rate was 121.9. Life expectancy at birth was estimated at 55.1 years in 1986. Men and women have very similar life expectancies at 55.4 and 55, respectively. With an average life expectancy of 58.8 years, urban dwellers in 1986 were likely to live longer than their rural counterparts (average life expectancy 54.8 years). The sex ratio of the population in 1981 was 106 males to 100 females.

In the late 1980s, about 82 percent of the population of Bangladesh (a total of 15.1 million households) resided in rural areas. With the exception of parts of Sylhet and Rangamati regions, where settlements occurred in nucleated or clustered patterns, the villages were scattered collections of homesteads surrounded by trees. Continuous strings of settlements along the roadside were also common in the southeastern part of the country.

Until the 1980s, Bangladesh was the most rural nation in South Asia. In 1931 only 27 out of every 1,000 persons were urban dwellers in what is now Bangladesh. In 1931 Bangladesh had fifty towns; by 1951 the country had eighty-nine towns, cities, and municipalities. During the 1980s, industrial development began to have a small effect on urbanization. The 1974 census had put the urban population of Bangladesh at 8.8 percent of the total; by 1988 that proportion had reached 18 percent and was projected to rise to 30 percent by the year 2000.

IMPACT:

Because of over-population the country cannot fulfill the essential needs of the people. It also increases the rate of illiteracy, unemployment, poverty, crime etc.

REASONS:
The main reasons for over population are lack of knowledge, early marriage, lack of knowledge about family planning etc. Even the government of our country does not take any step to over come this problem.

SOLUTION:
If we want to overcome this problem, we should take the necessary steps described below:
1. Increase the rate of literacy